


Crushed

by thatwriterlady



Series: ABO Bingo 2018 [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bisexual Castiel, Feelings, Fluff, Heartache, Injured Dean, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Up, Old Flames, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Physical Therapist Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 01:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwriterlady/pseuds/thatwriterlady
Summary: After losing part of his leg in a freak accident, Dean is put into physical therapy.  He's not exactly thrilled to find that his therapist is his ex, the only person he ever really loved, and the one that broke his heart.





	Crushed

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer***
> 
> I'm not a Physical Therapist, and I don't personally know one, so I went off what I could find off Google. I hope it's not horrible. Please, no need to correct me if I got things wrong because I don't plan to write another PT fic. I hope you all enjoy.

 

 

**_Medical~_ **

“I can’t believe you went under a car when no one was there to watch out for you,”  Sam chided. “You’ll be lucky if you have a leg after this.”

“Excuse me if I had work that still needed to be done.  I almost got out in time. Stupid wrench on the floor is what tripped me up.  At least it only got one leg and not both.” Dean was lucky to even be coherent in that moment considering the amount of painkillers coursing through his system.  He couldn’t feel anything, and that was probably a good thing considering his leg looked like a mangled mess. The car he’d been working on, a ’78 Oldsmobile, had fallen on him and nearly killed him tonight.  Judging by the expression on the doctor’s and nurses’ faces, he didn’t think he was going to walk away with two full legs either after this.

“Dean, your own number one rule is to never work under a car alone.”  Sam made the mistake of looking at the crushed mess of bone and skin that was what was left of his brother’s lower leg and almost threw up.  He jumped up from his seat and ran from the room.

“Wuss,”  Dean muttered before yawning and laying his head back.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel pain, it was that they had him so doped up it was muted down to almost nothing, despite how bad the damage was.  He felt some of it though, whimpering and groaning when they removed his shoe and began cutting his pants off. Sam didn’t come back before he was whisked away to x-ray.  That was probably a good thing.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Dean didn’t remember a whole lot between arriving at the hospital and waking up from surgery.  After the intubation tube was removed, he promptly fell back asleep and didn’t wake again until he was back in his room.  It was the sound of people talking that pulled from his slumber the second time, and he immediately wished he was still asleep because the pain was horrible.  He screamed and suddenly his mother was at his side, hitting the button for the nurse while Sam ran from the room to get someone in there faster.

“Honey, you need to calm down; someone’s coming now.  They’ll give you the pain meds you need.” She let him cling to her as he burst into tears, and she was as relieved as he was when a nurse came rushing back into the room with Sam right behind her.  She checked a few things real quick and then a second nurse came to assist as he was given a dose of morphine.

“D-do I have my leg?” he managed to ask.  His tonsils were sticking to his throat, making him cough.  The movement made his leg throb horribly.

“Uh…”  Sam looked at their mom, who took Dean’s hand in her own.

“Sweetheart, they had to amputate.  The leg was crushed so bad that some of it was almost like dust.”

“Why’d I wake up in so much pain?”  he asked, slurring his words from the new painkillers.

“I think they wanted you to wake up so they’d know how much to give you,”  Sam replied. “But then you went and slept way longer than anyone expected.”

“Where’s Dad?”  Dean croaked. After Mary got the ok to feed him some ice chips, she began spooning them into his mouth slowly.

“Dad had to handle the insurance and police reports.  He was here during your surgery, but then he got a call about the claim.  The lift was faulty, manufacturer’s mistake. They’re saying you can sue,”  she explained.

“Suing doesn’t get me my leg back though, does it,” he said bitterly.

“No, but it’ll get you one hell of a prosthetic that will make it like you never got hurt at all,”  Sam said. “And you can replace the faulty lifts so this never happens again.”

Dean fell asleep again a few minutes later, so Mary put the cup of ice aside and returned to her seat on the couch under the window.  Sam rejoined her.

“He’s not going to take losing his leg well at all,” she worried.  “He’s going to need more than just physical therapy; he’s going to need support from us as well,” she said softly.

“He needs to see a psychologist, or psychiatrist, whichever will help him cope,” Sam argued softly.  “It’s more than just familial support that he needs.” He looked over at his brother’s sleeping form.  “I hope he comes back from this ok, but I don’t have a good feeling.”

“You’re too negative, Sam.  Give him some credit. He is stubborn as a mule; he’ll get through this.”  His mother looked out the window that gave them a stunning view of the the east parking lot.  In the distance she could see a duck pond. “Leave the worrying up to me and your dad. You just support your brother.”

Sam looked at Dean again, this time his eyes wandering down to the empty space on the bed where the rest of his leg should have been.  He was still angry that they hadn’t given Dean something for the pain sooner, like _before_ he’d woken up in agony.  He’d be monitoring the treatment of his brother from now on, and if they hurt him again he’d slap them so hard with a lawsuit their heads would spin.

“Sammy.”

Sam jumped up at the sound of his name and approached his brother’s bed.

“Yeah, Dean?”

“’S the car ok?”

“What?  Baby’s fine, what are you talking about?”

Dean shook his head, though his eyes were still closed.  ‘No, the Olds. ‘S ok?”

Of course Dean would worry about the car he’d been working on.

‘Benny’s going to handle that.  You just worry about healing.”

Dean sighed and fell silent again.  Just when Sam thought he’d fallen back to sleep, he spoke.

“It was the hydraulics that failed?”

‘Yeah, it was,”  Sam replied.

“Sue the fuck out of them, Sammy.”

Sam’s laugh was small and humorless.  “I plan on it.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Dean hadn’t even been in the hospital a week before he was being released.  Sam and Mary both protested his early release, but the hospital insisted Dean’s insurance didn’t cover anything longer.  So Sam called the insurance personally. It turned out to be true, and Dean was released into his own care and sent home.

Unwilling to leave him on his own without two working legs, and before his physical therapy could start, Mary, John, and Sam all took turns staying with Dean, since he refused to move home with his parents.  Not when he had two dogs (which he wouldn’t have had if not for Sam’s stupid puppy dog eyes when the dogs were dumped at Sam’s by a former friend) that needed him. He was particularly stubborn for an Alpha, something that his family found both endearing and frustrating.  Mostly frustrating. He had crutches and a wheelchair (which he staunchly refused to use unless under the direst of circumstances, like the rare moments he was home alone and wanted a sandwich, he’d roll himself into the kitchen and make one).

When the time came for his prosthetic, he got the benefit of being able to afford a high-quality one.  Between the lawsuits his brother was slapping on the hydraulic manufacturer and on the hospital for repeatedly denying him the pain medication he needed, and letting the incision get infected, _plus_ his income as a successful business owner, he was able to pay for a prosthetic that, with therapy, would theoretically allow him to look like he had never lost his leg at all.  It had to be fitted to him though, and then he had to wait for the finished product to be made. The day he got it was bittersweet. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t just slap it on and walk.  His stubborn Alpha nature tried to convince him he didn’t need physical therapy, that he could just…learn on his own how to walk in it, but his first few attempts landed him face first on his living room floor, so he reluctantly conceded to the physical therapy his insurance planned to pay for.

That was where he was today, sitting in the physical therapy department of the hospital, waiting to meet his new therapist.  When a head full of messy dark hair and piercing blue eyes, attached to a face he hadn’t seen in some 20 plus years, came walking in, he wanted to curl up and die.  He knew his therapist, intimately, actually. Well he _had_ known him intimately.

“Dean!  Dean _Winchester!_ ”

Dean smiled weakly.  “Hey, Cas. Long time no see.”

Castiel Novak, the only Omega he’d ever been in love with.  Hell, the only _person_ he’d ever been in love with.  Damn, he looked good. He stood in front of Dean with a huge smile on his face, until he noticed Dean’s leg, or lack thereof.

“Dean, what happened?  The hospital report says this was an accident.  You’re missing the lower half of your right leg, below the knee?  What kind of accident were you in?”

“A hydraulic at work failed and dropped a car on me.”  Dean replied. Cas’ face went pale.

“Jesus, it wasn’t a ’78 Olds, was it?”

Dean frowned as he looked up at him.  “Yeah, it was.”

“That’s my brother’s car.  His wife had brought it in for servicing.  They were told the car crushed someone, so they sold it.  To me. Of course they didn’t tell me that little tid bit until _after_ I had my name on the title.”

Dean chuckled as he hobbled to his feet.  He got his crutches underneath himself and adjusted the prosthetic that was slung across his back in the bag his friend Charlie had given him for it.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, it didn’t crush me, just half my leg.  I was pinned until my brother came looking for me. A neighbor complained that my dogs were barking and called him thinking something had happened to me.  I wasn’t home, which he thought was strange, so he came to the shop to find me. Everything after that is a blur until after I woke up from the surgery. They over-sedated me when I first arrived and then under-sedated me after the surgery.  Sam’s suing them for negligence.”

“So you went into auto mechanics, not therapy like you’d wanted?”  Cas asked as they began walking.

“I sort of wanted to do both.  I did therapy for a few years, but then a shop was closing because the owner wanted to retire.  I made him a deal and bought it. Most people don’t even realize I’m a therapist, outside of my family.  It’s why they didn’t push for me to go to therapy. They just offered me their support. Still do.”

“So, what’s going on in life?  Besides the obvious?” Cas asked as he took the bag with the prosthetic.  He set it aside and sat Dean down on a padded table. He lifted the edge of the track pants Dean had worn that day and began examining what Dean had come to call “Stumpy”.

“Not a whole lot.  Work mostly. You?”

“Same, mostly.  Just got out of a bad marriage.  She was a Beta, an absolute angel when we met, then about three years ago she found Jesus.  I became the object of most of her ire and because I refused to go to church with her twice a week _and_ do Bible study _and_ volunteer at the church _and_ renounce being bisexual, I became the enemy.  It was bad by the end, and I was being verbally and physically abused, so I left.  Second marriage for me, first for her, though heaven help any other man that marries her.”  Cas snorted.

“Second marriage?”  Dean hadn’t even had a first!

“First wife died of cancer,”  Cas said quietly.

“I’m sorry, man.”  Dean meant that.

“It’s ok.  We didn’t marry for love.  She was my best friend, and no one would have claimed her body and had her cremated.  I mean, sure, the state would have, but she wanted her ashes spread over the ocean. They weren’t going to do that, so I made her a promise.  Never consummated it, she was just my best friend. You remember Meg, right?” Cas looked up and saw the moment it clicked for Dean.

“Damn, Meg died?”

Cas nodded.  “Yeah, 12 years ago this May.  I have custody of her daughter, Ruby.  Another reason why we married. I managed to adopt Ruby before Meg passed away. Ruby’s 17 now, a very level-headed Omega, about to leave for college next year.  I’m not ready. She’s been mine alone since she was five. She has the same dark hair and eyes as her mom did. Beautiful girl.”

“She’s lucky to have you,”  Dean told him sincerely. “Not all kids are lucky enough to have someone want them.”

“What about you?  Wife? Husband? Kids?”  Cas asked as he checked the healing incision.

“No wife, no husband, no significant other.  Thought I had a son for a while, but turns out my girlfriend at the time just cheated.  Sam’s married though. He has four kids, can you believe it?”

Cas looked up at him and grinned.  “I can, actually. He was crazy for that girl Jessica.  Did they end up together?”

“Nah. They made it through college, then split. He mated a sweet Omega named Eileen. They’ve got three girls and a boy. I think they’re done though. Nine, seven, six, and four. The boy is four. He’s the spitting image of Sam.”

“Well, I’m happy for him.  Let’s get started, ok? First, I’ll show you the proper way to attach your prosthetic.  If you tried at home without proper knowledge, you can cause sores.”

Cas walked him through how to attach and detach the prosthetic.  As he did, he talked about things like fall risk factors, balance, and gait.  Dean paid close attention because, when this was all over, he wanted to be able to walk without a cane or any assistance.

Thank god Cas was patient.  He’d been a physical therapist since they’d graduated college and specialized in orthopedics and prosthetic therapy.  Dean had met him in a psychology class their freshman year of college and they’d immediately hit it off as friends, but it wasn’t until their last year that things between them had changed.  Cas had confessed he thought he was bisexual, and admitted to having a crush on Dean. Dean had known since middle school that he liked boys and girls, and that secondary gender meant nothing.  He dated Alphas, Betas and Omegas alike, though he had a preference for guys. For the sake of living up to his father’s expectations, he’d dated only girls up until that point. He admitted to having a crush on Cas too, but was afraid to act on it for fear of disappointing his father.  An advanced psychology class that helped him come to terms with his “daddy issues” and his sexuality had him go home that spring break and tell his parents that he was bi. It had gone over better than he’d expected and when he’d come back to school, he’d asked Cas out.

The funny thing was, it was Cas’ brothers that hadn’t been ok with their little brother dating a guy.  Dating an Alpha was fine, as long as the Alpha was a _she._  They’d slept together exactly once, barely told one another “I love you” before Cas was suddenly second guessing his feelings, and whether he really was bi.  It put a strain on their relationship, and by graduation they had drifted apart. Cas went home to Illinois and they never spoke again. Until now. Three weeks into therapy, Dean wanted answers, closure really, so he asked the burning question that had been nagging at him for 22 years.

“Cas.”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Why did you break up with me?  Was it something I did or just the pressure from Mike and Bart?”

Cas sighed heavily, catching Dean when he wobbled and righting him again.

“It was me. I was an idiot, and I had the same fears you did of disappointing my family.  If you remember, they were very religious and having a son that wasn’t straight just wasn’t proper, but…they tolerated it.  My parents thought I was just being rebellious, that it was a phase, but I knew it wasn’t. They wanted me to find a strong, female Alpha that would dominate me and put the fear of God in me.  So did my brothers. They knew how happy you made me, and how much…I loved you, and they set about breaking us up. If it’s any consolation, I was a mess after I went back to Illinois, for a long time too.  I wanted to call you, to apologize and see if you would give me another chance, so my brothers got me involved in the church, hoping that if I was busy, I’d stop thinking about you. It didn’t work. I never _stopped_ thinking about you.  By the time I got up the nerve to call you and ask for your forgiveness, you’d changed your number.”

“I did as soon as I went home.  I was angry and hurt. I was in love with you, man, and you just broke my heart.  I never wanted to see or speak to you again. Truthfully, I haven’t even dated another Omega since you either.  It felt like you ruined me for them because of how much I loved you. I was scared another might do it to me too, leave me like you did.”  Dean rubbed the back of his neck as he came to a stop and looked at his old lover. “I don’t feel that way anymore. We were young, we knew better, but I get pressure.  My folks have been pressuring me for years now to find someone and settle down. Family can put a lot of pressure on a person, but no one puts more pressure on us than ourselves.  I knew back then that you just wanted to make your family happy. If they were happy, they left you alone. Are they still like that?”

“I don’t know.  My folks are dead and I don’t speak to Mike or Bart, only Gabe, Naomi, Hael, and Hester.  I’ve dated men and women since then, but never Alphas. None have ever lived up to you,” Cas confessed.  “Sorry, that was inappropriate. Shall we?” He motioned for Dean to start walking again.

“You broke my heart, man.  You were honestly the last person I thought could or would do that to me.”  Dean was trying to let it go, he really was. He stopped walking again. “You say you’re bi?”

“I am.  I have no doubts about it now.  I’m not conflicted anymore. I’ve done a lot of growing up since I went back to Illinois, and even more since I decided I couldn’t handle my family’s bullshit and came back here,”  Cas replied.

“So…not seeing anyone?”  Dean asked. A smile flickered at the corners of Cas’ mouth.

“Not currently, no.  I just finalized my divorce two months ago.  I’ve been trying to decompress ever since but I could perhaps be persuaded to say yes to a date, if the right Alpha asked.”

Dean considered it.  Cas could see the doubt flicker in his eyes.

“I swear I would never do that to you again.”  He touched the Alpha’s arm gently. “I never stopped loving you, or hating myself for what I did to you.”

“Would you like to go out sometime?  Maybe start over?” Dean asked. “But not til my therapy is done.  I think…I need a little more time.”

“I would be honored.  I can definitely wait,”  Cas replied.

He’d wait forever, if that was what Dean wanted.  The Alpha was worth it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 16 more to go. I have to write more of them, so bear with me. Thank you for reading.


End file.
